Lacey's House

By Joanne Graham

A lonely woman, treated with disdain and suspicion by her neighbors, finds an unlikely new friend in this “authentic and intensely heartfelt” novel (Ruth Dugdall, author of The Woman Before Me).
 
In Devon, England, Lacey Carmichael leads a solitary life. To her neighbors, she was just the old woman who lived at the end of the lane, crazy but harmless—until she was briefly suspected of murder.
 
When young artist Rachel Moore arrives in the village, escaping her own demons, the two women form an unlikely bond. Sharing tales of loss and heartache, they become friends. Rachel sees beyond the lingering rumors that have made Lacey a social outcast, believing in her innocence. But as details of Lacey’s life are revealed, Rachel is left questioning where the truth really lies…
 
“Joanne Graham is a great talent.”—Louise Douglas, author of The Secrets Between Us

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789550450

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Lacey

She hadn’t spoken to her father in years. The silence had expanded to fill every room in the house until it was a tangible, solid thing that they had to push past whenever they moved. A plate of food would be placed in front of him as he sat at the dinner table, his laundry gathered unrequested, his boots tidied away into the hallway, his medical bag prepared. But not once did she open her mouth to speak, not once did she so much as look at him.

Sometimes he would open his mouth and a faltering sound would emerge, not quite a word but far from the common silence. And before the syllables were formed, before his lips closed to shape it into something recognisable, she would be gone and the word would fall into nothing.

She would feel his eyes on her at times; sense the questions in that look with the heavy brow and the pinched mouth. His frustration beat against her like waves in winter, but she kept her balance and maintained her vow.

How many years had it been? She couldn’t remember and when she tried to, it ached in her head until she frowned and rubbed her eyes. It had been a long, long time. So much had happened that she should hold on to, but the memories skittered away like cockroaches when the light was turned on. They moved too fast and couldn’t be grasped.

Some things were remembered, as if through a haze, but at least they were remembered. Her mother, already slight, had grown stick thin and begun to fade until finally she had lain in a darkened room in a pale ball of agony and failed to breathe in. Stood beside him in the graveyard, drizzly rain seeping into black clothing, she had looked at the coffin and heard her mother’s voice calling from inside.

People had come to the house for the wake and she had prepared food and looked at the carpet as she handed plates around. They looked her way with curious eyes, waiting for her to behave with something far removed from normality. Some had exchanged greetings, asked her questions, and they had been answered with a soft, faltering voice that became quieter as her eyes were pulled towards the window and beyond to the distant hills.

Her father had sat in his chair, rigid and dour, shaking hands with the local men, nodding politely to their wives and daughters and not looking at the pretty, silent woman that hung like a weight around his neck.

Now though, as she lay on the bed and watched the ceiling lights pass, her eyes tried to find him. There was a flash of dark fabric behind the others tucked tightly around the bed and she craned her head to see beyond them until a hand curled across her forehead and pulled her head flat against the mattress. Several attempts wielded the same results and she felt the panic rise in her chest. The sharp stink of disinfectant filled her nostrils kicking up a vague memory. She had been here before but couldn’t remember enough to know why her heart raced and fear spread through her limbs.

The movement stopped and it seemed that everyone spoke at once. She raised her head again and this time nobody stopped her. Someone moved away and there he was, his coat in dark contrast to the white of the others. He stared at her dispassionately before his eyes moved to look at something she could not see.

Please, father, please stop them! She felt the vow of silence shatter around her but the words were propelled by fear. In that moment all that mattered was getting out of there. He remained rigid and unmoved. She looked at the walls and felt the hands on her again. White room, white coats, hands on her ankles, hands holding her wrists. Her eyes moved to the faces suspended above, their weight pressing her further into the bed. Mouths moved in masks of concentration but the words blurred together, grew hazy around the edges until they became white noise hanging over where she cowered and urinated in fear.

But then she saw it: a flash of colour beyond the crushing bodies. The big red shiny ball held by little hands that bounced it against the hard floor tiles before catching it again. Bounce... slap. Bounce... slap. She looked to the space above those perfect, dimpled hands and met the eyes of her young son, crinkled at the edges as he smiled at her and bounced his ball.

She knew then that she had to stay calm, more afraid now that she might scare him; she looked into his eyes and started to sing,

Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mamma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. Her voice faltered and stumbled over the syllables, shaking while she was manipulated by the hands of the doctors, but she carried on and was rewarded with a bigger smile that she managed to return. She saw the doctors turn and follow her gaze before looking at each other, but she forced herself to concentrate on the red of that ball, the width of his smile.

Bounce... slap. Even as they turned her and tied the straps across her forehead, she could still hear the ball, and she still sang. As she felt the leather around her limbs and heard the metal buckles grate as they were pulled tighter and tighter, her voice shook but was still there.

Fingers reached from somewhere above her and pulled her eyelids up and up until her vision blurred and she could barely see the craggy face of the man that moved close and stared into her eyes. He moved back again and the face was replaced by hands. Those hands would haunt her years later, when screams would echo down a tunnel that was decades long. She would see those hands with their half bitten nails and the specks of dirt in the corners that told her the owner cared nothing for hygiene. She was tainted by them.

She saw the point through teary eyes and it hovered like a star above her, moving closer, growing bigger and bigger until it filled her vision. She heard the hammer blow before she felt the pain, a cricket ball hit for six on a distant village green. A metallic echoing sound that she was still contemplating as the pain exploded behind her eyes and pushed the song from her mouth with a scream. She was burning, burning in her head as sound became a whine in her ears and the room began to drift.

CHAPTER 1

Rachel

It began with an ending. In the darkest part of the night when the moon had long passed the window and all I could see were shadows within shadows. When I awoke to pain that should not be there and felt the fear of it carve through me. When I felt the cloying wetness of her absence and shied away from it. It began with a chill that painted goose flesh across my skin. It began with a bloom of red on white sheets.

That long night gave way to a bitterly cold January day, the kind that paints diamonds on the pavements. The slump from Christmas had cast shadows in the eyes of passers-by, their shoulders heavy enough to rest on their hips as they walked. I looked at them and did not want to carry the weight of them, the misery of them. I looked up the street and wanted to keep on going, to keep on walking and never look back. I wanted to walk right out of my life and leave it behind. But I didn’t, not then.

Instead, I sat in the shabby waiting room with its worn chairs and peeling paint, feeling like the invisible woman as people bustled around me. I had sat and waited and prayed that everything would be alright. But sitting before the doctor as he looked at his computer screen and then right through me, I felt that hope wither away.

We’ll send you up to the hospital for a scan just to make sure.

To make sure? You mean there’s a chance the baby is still alive? I felt the jump in my chest, a flicker of possibility that I wanted to cling on to. His head shook slightly, a movement small enough that I could pretend I hadn’t seen it if I wanted to go on fooling myself for a little longer.

There is a very small chance but I think it is highly unlikely. The scan will verify the situation.

Cold and clinical, the words were a dagger in my belly and I fought against a rush of tears. He saw my face crumple and had the grace to look contrite.

I am sorry, it’s just one of…

I held up my hand, a visual full stop sweeping the words from the doctor’s mouth and catching them in my palm; I curled my fingers tight around the empty phrase that meant nothing to me and even less to him. He reached forwards to pat the back of my hand, still clenched around his words, still damp with the tears and snot that I had wiped there a few minutes before in the waiting room. His concern seemed to be no more than a reflex response from someone who has seen it all before, said these words before and had long ago stopped caring. Perhaps for him a lost baby was frequent enough to become commonplace, but not for me. His sympathy touched lightly upon his face and stayed there, penetrating no deeper beneath the surface, not touching his heart or mind. Did he practice that look in the mirror? Too easily I could imagine him making small adjustments, getting the right element of frown and downturned mouth, the perfect, subtle nuances in his cheeks that reflected an ideal study of empathy and compassion. A mask he could wear over his usual, everyday smile as the need arose.

I wanted to scream at him, ‘Not to me, never to me!’ To tear myself apart in front of him, pulling skin from flesh and flesh from bone so that he could examine every fibre of my being and see the loss reflected there; see how empty and barren I was without my child to fill the empty spaces. I wanted to shock his actor’s face into something other than meaningless pseudo-sympathy. I wanted to show him that I wasn’t going to take all the hopes and dreams I had created around my tiny baby, bundle them up into a little dusty package and tidy it away. She wasn’t just ‘one of those things’ to me. Those things were birds shitting on my head, a broken heel or spilled coffee. Surely those words couldn’t apply to my broken baby who had curled up inside me and died beneath my heartbeat. She wasn’t one of those things, she had been so much more.

I opened my mouth to tell him, to send barbed words into his skin so he could hurt as I hurt, but they travelled as far as my throat and stalled, stumbling over the unshed tears lodged there. I felt powerless, frozen in that silent moment. I got to my feet and saw the brief spasm of relief on his face before he covered it by turning around to his desk and busying himself with his keyboard. He had got over the difficult bit. The patient wasn’t going to melt into a boneless puddle on the floor that he would have to mop up before the next one came in. He had done his job well and everything was going to be fine.

I stumbled home, pausing only long enough to make the appointment that would tell me that my baby was dead and everything was different now. I fought the urge to keep on walking past my flat, to just keep on going until exhaustion forced me to stop. I slid my key into the lock, waiting for familiarity to settle about me, seeking the comfort of my own space. I saw my paintings on the wall, my rugs, my furniture and they looked two dimensional, flat and colourless as though the life pouring out of me had stolen the life from everywhere else. I stretched out on the floor, deeply tired but unable to bear the thought of going into the bedroom and facing blood stained sheets.

At some point the clouds had rolled in. Fat, pregnant raindrops splattered onto the skylight above and I watched as they exploded into smaller droplets and trickled slowly down the glass, meandering along until they joined up with others and became larger, running faster until they faded at the edges of the frame.

The wooden floor lay uncomfortably against my shoulder blades as I watched these raindrop races, the foreground to a lowering, oppressive sky that pushed me further back into the floor and pinned me down. Slowly I began to move my arms and legs, no snow to leave an angel in, just the unyielding polished wood that smelled of lemons and age. I wondered whether what I did now would leave any impression on those that would come afterwards. Would they sense somehow that I had lain here? Would their shadows dip a miniscule amount as they spilled over this section of the floor, a subtle change they could sense somewhere deep within them?

I would never know for sure whether the baby had been a little girl, but somewhere deep down I was certain of it and I felt her absence fill the space around me. I realised that I couldn’t stay here, where a blue line on a plastic wand had become wet, red linen; where for too short a time I had imagined a different reality from the one I faced now. Everything felt strange, alien, and I no longer belonged in the place where I had lost her. I needed to find somewhere else, anywhere else.

But as I made the plans that tried to keep my mind focused away from grief, I saw the swift flash of bird wings as it passed the glass and I thought, why stop there? What was there for me here in Birmingham? The relationship with my baby’s father had been over before I had even discovered the pregnancy; a short-lived romance that neither of us had wanted to take any further. I hadn’t had the chance to tell him about the baby and now there was nothing to tell. There were few ties left in the city and those that existed would stretch or be easy enough to sever.

I had my work, but as a freelance artist I could do that practically anywhere. I could move away and start over. I grasped the idea as if it were a lifeline; a fresh start somewhere completely new. The more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea became until it seemed that there were no other options. I told myself that this was what I needed, that this was the best thing to do, that I wasn’t running away.

I let my mind drift along with thoughts of what I could do the following day to set everything in motion, and I tried not to think about the force behind these decisions. I tried to ignore the cramps and aches, and willed myself to push aside my longing. I tried to forget that as she left, she took with her the fulfilment of a dream I had carried since childhood.

CHAPTER 2

Rachel

I listened to the wet slap of feet on the glistening grey pavement, the gritty tyres scouring the roads, and I thought about the plywood sign. Whenever I looked back at the child I had been, the sign was the first thing I would see hanging in front of me, compelling me to turn away. It had been hastily made, roughly broken from a larger sheet so that the edges were sharp, splintered. Harsh enough to draw blood as it poked through my clothes. I can still feel the friction burn on the back of my neck from the twine; I still recognise the sharp sting of my humiliation.

The children’s home I grew up in stood near the crest of a small hill on the outskirts of Downham Market in the wild Norfolk countryside. I had no memories of a time before it. I would screw my eyes shut tightly as I tried to force a memory – anything – but there were only empty spaces that would eventually be filled by other people’s tales of a life I didn’t recognise as belonging to me.

I couldn’t even remember my arrival. I had been barely eighteen months old the first time I set foot in the old house. I often wonder what my first impressions of it were. Was I intimidated by the size of it? Did I take a step across the doorway on tiny, nervous feet that teetered and stumbled? Or did I enter in the arms of someone appointed to care for me? Did I turn my face away and bury it in a stranger’s shoulder?

All I really know is that my earliest memories are of that house and the children that lived within it. Despite its size, it didn’t look bleak and dark and cold, though it should have. The house was built of warm brown stone, with windows in the eaves and a big porch. If you looked closely enough, the signs of age and lack of care were visible beneath that first impression. I saw it in the paint that I flaked off with my fingernails and in the crumbling wood beneath it. But despite its flaws the house looked majestic and beautiful. I wonder if that would have given me hope when I had first arrived with nothing but a name and a cloak of neglect.

How long was it before I couldn’t see its beauty at all? Behind the front door a different story emerged. Cracked and worn lino on the floors and a smell of disinfectant. Inside it felt as though it was no-one’s home, just a collection of walls to hold the unwanted children whose identities were left firmly at the door.

It was all I knew until I was eight years old. Like all the other kids I existed only as a problem to overcome; a frequent thorn in the sides of those paid to make sure I made it through another day without getting hurt. Sticking plasters were given out for gashed knees and grazed elbows but emotional wounds were left to fester untended and ignored.

There were good care workers and bad. Some of them just wanted to get through the day, others tried to make it better for us, dishing out sweets and cuddles, holding our hands when we were upset. But they couldn’t take away what we were; the foundlings, the kids in care, lost boys and girls. We were charity cases, all of us. Our donated clothes were frayed and worn. I had someone else’s name tag in my school uniform as if I wasn’t a person in my own right. Everyone at school knew what we were, and walking the corridors became another source of torment. Sly pokes in the ribs and chinese burns from children who forgot all about me and the hatred in my eyes as their parents tucked them up snug and warm at night.

I would sit on my bed, up in the eaves watching the room around me grow darker as the natural light faded. The streetlamp beyond the window would come on and behind it the sky was vast and gloomy. A huge dome of clouds, bleak and heavy with rain hung above the flat wasteland of the Norfolk countryside. How I hated that oppressive sky; the weight of it made me feel as small and insignificant as an ant beneath someone’s shoe.

I was small for my age, an easy target for the displaced angry children that lived in the home. I rarely spoke and spent a lot of time on my own. I made no attempt to fit in with them, to do things their way and so I stood out, I was different.

I had a bedroom of my own because I wet the bed and screamed out in my sleep, waking the other children and the carers posted to watch over us. Sometimes I would get the slipper for disturbing the house, other times the scorn and laughter would pour over me from the mouths of others. I preferred the slipper.

The room was no larger than one of the store cupboards but it had the window, through which I watched the world outside and for a few hours I was free. Those hours of silence painted dark shadows beneath my eyes, as I yawned my way through the following day. My solitude was more than recompense for the exhaustion that made my heels drag, bringing sharp words from the teachers as I failed, once again, to pay attention.

I watched the changing seasons pass slowly. Autumn was my favourite time as the leaves turned the colour of fire and began to fall, turning the dull grey of the drive into a soft, patterned carpet. Immersed in the beauty of their colours I would weave dreams from nothing, creating a life I had never known.

I sat in my room feeling like Rapunzel as I waited for my mother to come and rescue me. I designed a mother who was alien and strange but whom I was sure existed somewhere. I had no knowledge of her but I had seen other families on their way to school and envied their easy laughter and warm glances. She was woven from strands of hope and longing until the image took on a deeper resonance and became almost real in my mind. If someone had asked me what she looked like, I could have told them in detail, right down to the curve of her smile and the glint in her eyes as she looked at me with pride.

I was sure that my mother had lost me somehow, through no fault of her own. I wondered if we had been on a trip to the park or the shops and I had been accidentally left behind. I knew that she would be desperate to find me and I waited and waited for her to turn up and take me back home, wherever home was. I simply couldn’t accept that I was stuck in that soulless house forever.

How long was it before that hope faded? Before I finally realised that she wouldn’t come? How long before waiting and watching from my window became a chore, something I felt I should do but had no patience for? The sense of identity I had created around my mother faded over time and left a space behind. I no longer recognised the person I was in the mirror and I drifted through the house wondering if I was solid, whole.

My room was a sanctuary for me, somewhere I could sit at my dressing table and look at my reflection. I stared at the darkness of my eyes, the shape of my nose, my lips, my smile. I committed every tiny detail to memory and wondered if I would one day recognise my features on the face of a stranger in the street. And as I sat there one day, the door burst open and my reflection disappeared into a crowd of grasping hands.

I was pulled roughly from the room, my feet sliding out from underneath me as I fought for balance. They dragged me down the first flight of stairs into the corridor below where there was more space to gather round and join in the fun. ‘Call me stupid’ the sign read, black poster paint daubed on with a childish hand. And they did, over

Reviews for Lacey's House

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book really tugs on your heartstrings. Rachel and Lacey, are a generation apart, but both have experienced many of life's trials in ways that have had a detrimental effect on their lives. Lacey's background is so personally horrific that it is hard to understand how she has managed to cope. Yet she has found a way, and when Rachel moves next door to her, they become friends. A novel about the importance of friendships, of having just one person you trust enough to open up to and tell your secrets. There are so many poignant moments in this novel, and I came to care greatly for these two woman. In some parts it was very hard to read, I really just wanted to comfort the poor young girl that Lacey was. I read somewhere that the author wrote this about some parts of her grandmother's life. I am so glad that mental illness has come father than the barbaric treatments they practiced in the past. That some secrets that need to be told are not being kept in the family home, that there are people who care enough to intercede. How important that is. In some places I felt it was overdone and could definitely see this being made into a Lifetime channel movie. I would recommend this to readers who like Kristin Hannah, Luanne Rice and those who like woman's fiction. A wonderful tribute to the author's grandmother.Love the simple cover. ARC from NetGalley.

[margitte123 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lacey's House by Joanne GrahamAfter reading this book I sat for a while, totally speechless and dumbfounded. It took several minutes, a lot of 'several minutes' actually, to come back to my own life and its immediate demands. Believe me, I almost did it kicking and screaming! For a debut novel, this is surely one of the best I have ever read! There is so much I want to, and can, say, but somehow my thoughts just drifted off in a multicolored hot air balloon over the Winscombe skies. There was simply none left for me to write a suitable review with.Two women, young Rachel Moore and 84-year old Tracey Eleanor Carmichael, ended up living side by side in Apple Lane, Winscombe where Rachel moved into Dove cottage next to Tracey. The address was not only words to suit a chocolate-box address. Lacey's House would open up a journey for both to finally rise above: electric shock treatments; a lobotomy; a cruel life in an orphanage; an unknown mother who valued her alcohol addiction above everything else; a monstrous doctor; an ignorant vicious community; a village outlay in the form of a question mark; a woman talking to the dead at their graves, planting roses there because it was a hated flower for that particular deceased, since in real life her words was forced inside her head for safety reasons; a cat named Peachy. And then there was Charlie..."That's the funny thing about small village life, reputations often last longer than the person themselves." But perceptions can be forced to change. When "Albert was dead lying on the floor of his house with his blood serving as a cushion for his head", the increasingly embellished tale of a witch, which was told to children in the dark of night, suddenly took a turn that would change lives forever.Without the truth, fiction is not possible. "This story... this story is different, tantalizing, compelling" Lacey herself said that, which saves me from using the publishing-industry's neologism to sing the praise of this 2012 Luke Bitmead Bursary Award-winning book. Although there's no love lost for sentimentality in the book, the same compassionate message is present as evident in my speechless state of wonder afterwards!This tale proves a theory: Anything, from an unwanted -ism to an un-addressed emotion, forced underground, takes root and flourish. People sadly and often deny it. And if it is nourished well, deeply loved, it can push up beautiful flowers to face the sun. But to become beautiful, it needs strong roots underground, in the often dark, in the uncompromising toughness of the earth. It is the only way that the perfect flowers can rise above the surface and charm the world. Even well-nourished weeds have beautiful flowers.This book addresses the wealth and strength of the human spirit in unimaginable ways. The elements used in the book, two vastly opposite life stories, with one common denominator namely the absence of love as children, are not unknown to the world at all, but the combination used in this narrative, makes it stand out way above the average novel in this genre. The conclusion is surprising and original. In the end it confronts us all, who we are and how we ended up as human beings and what became of us in the aftermath of those choices. It is not how and where we were planted,but how we utilized the nourishment bestowed on us to paint the picture we would ultimately call our chocolate-box address. What a difference attitude can make!

[schatje_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Rachel is a young woman with a difficult past; Lacey, a simple woman viewed by most people as a mad old woman, had an even more difficult past. The two become neighbours and develop a friendship as they share their tales of loss. Lacey’s story, however, raises questions when Rachel discovers facts that totally contradict Lacey’s version of events from her past.The novel is structured around chapters that alternate between the two protagonists. Rachel’s chapters are written in first person point of view whereas Lacey’s are in third person limited omniscient point of view. The advantage of this approach is that the reader becomes aware of the thoughts and feelings of both women and so comes to understand the reasons for their behaviour. This is especially important for an understanding of Lacey whose grasp of reality sometimes seems tenuous. Rachel proves to be a dynamic character. She comes to terms with her past as she shares her story with Lacey and listens to hers in turn. Lacey’s life story serves to put Rachel’s own experiences into perspective and makes her realize she must take certain steps to avoid a future that could be as difficult as her past.There are some twists but generally the plot is very predictable. Lacey’s visit to a lawyer, for example, foreshadows the inevitable ending. Likewise, certain topics of conversation keep cropping up and they indicate the direction events will take.The theme is clearly stated: “it is easier to imagine a life without flaws, without difficulty than to accept a desperate reality you are powerless to change.” Both women do that, Lacey more so because of her circumstances. Of course this is a very human coping mechanism so readers should be able to relate. Life in a small rural village is portrayed realistically. The author seems to understand how small towns function: the gossiping and rumor-mongering, the unwillingness to accept those who are even slightly different, the respect given to the village doctor.This book is not really the literary fiction I normally read so I am perhaps not best qualified to judge its quality. I can, however, imagine it being made into a Hallmark movie.Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.